Many Moraine restaurants benefited greatly by establishing their location near the large Frigidaire plant (and future General Motors Assembly Plant) and marketing their menu and attractions to entice factory workers to stop in for breakfast or lunch and after work.
This one small building at the southwest corner of Blanchard Ave. and Springboro Pike across from the former Upper Deck Tavern has quite the history. The restaurant is called Moraine Lunch & Night Club which opened its doors in 1933.
Moraine Lunch opened at 5:30am and closed at 2:30am and offered both American and Hungarian cuisine such as cabbage rolls, chicken or veal paprikas. Moraine Lunch offered food, drinks and dancing, marketing itself as a popular late evening attraction not just to Frigidaire workers but to the entire Miami Valley. The original 2-story wood-frame building burnt down in 1958. A new stucco-brick building was built in 1961 and opened as The Vanaheim. The Vanaheim restaurant offered good food and holiday dances but never achieved the success as Moraine Lunch.
Next door to Moraine Lunch was the infamous Moraine Smokery which did not offer any food nor smoke products and was raided for bookmaking horse races. Across the street was Silas Tavern which eventually became The Lighthouse which offered beer and light food for plant workers but not to the scale of Moraine Lunch & Night Club. Silas Tavern will always be remembered as its bar manager was robbed of $10,000 at gunpoint by famous gangster Bugs Moran in 1946. Moran’s gang was gunned down in Chicago a decade earlier by Al Cappone which was called “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre”.
Although none of these restaurants exist today, they were important businesses in Moraine back in their time to feed the over 3,500 workers at the Frigidaire plant.
